As if email inboxes weren’t multitasking hard enough, Google has upped the ante by adding social networking to its Gmail service.
Its newest product, Google Buzz, incorporates status updates and shared content such as photos, video and links from people the user is connected to. Users can view this content either in the Gmail inbox, along with email messages, or in a separate Buzz “inbox” accessed by clicking a link in the left-hand navigation list within Gmail.
Although Gmail might account for about 10 to 15 percent of the email addresses on a B2C list (maybe as high as 25 percent on newer mailing lists), it does have several implications for email marketers:
1. Email inbox interfaces are busier than ever. Besides Gmail, email clients including Xobni and Outlook and Webmail services such as Yahoo have expanded inbox functionality. Yahoo, for example, recently added inline chat, a beefed-up calendar and links to Flickr and PayPal.
The functions are designed to integrate with and complement email, but they also can distract the user from reading email.
2. The inbox itself will be more crowded than ever. Buzz will send alerts whenever anyone the user follows posts fresh content. Your messages will face added competition that’s even more relevant because it comes from people the user actively chooses to follow.
If they’re exceptionally busy social networkers, expect to see these alerts push your email marketing messages farther away from the fresh-content sweet spot.
At this time, Buzz is brand new, so it’s too early to predict its long-term impact. Google has a mixed track record–with some services such as Gmail continuing to gain market share, while services like Orkut and Wave seem to be relegated to also-ran status.
Here’s how you can rise to the challenge of inboxes that have gone social:
1. Work harder to get your sending email address added to recipients’ contact lists or address books. Not only does this make your email more deliverable through personal whitelisting, but also because Buzz automatically follows anyone on the user’s contact list.
Ask for this at opt-in and in your welcome message as well as in the administrative area of your messages where you post recurring information.
2. Brand your “From” and subject lines. Your messages must stand out, now more than ever and in inboxes all over, not just Gmail. Your From and subject lines should reflect your company name, brand, newsletter name and the like.
Don’t use a person’s name or email address (those with “rock star” status can be exceptions). Vague subject lines will fade into the woodwork, so tell your story in the inbox (value proposition, call to action, etc.). Subject lines that surprise, delight, make you laugh or otherwise get the recipient to engage are never more vital.
3. One-to-one messaging must replace one-to-many broadcasts. Buzz is designed to keep its users in Gmail more often and longer than usual, so it might train them to check for new messages more often than once or twice daily.
However, alerts–not just from Buzz but also from other social networks like Facebook (assuming it will eventually be pulled in to Buzz) and Twitter–represent a flood of highly relevant material that could bury impersonal broadcast email messages.
Wrapping Up
Time will tell which content and approach will help you stand out. Personalization that reflects preferences and buying history, triggered emails and value-added transactional emails will become even more important.
Tracking your clicks and giving users many opportunities to tell you what they want will show you the right path.
Love your blog, showing maturity in your response. I should just give up and take lessons from you
Follow me on Twitter
The trouble is: do we or anyone else actually want that social stream in our inbox? Do we really want to mix such (short) messages and conversations with ‘regular’ emails. In a way I like the separation of e-mail and the social stream: it gives more rest in the inbox (hinted at in point #2) which is crowded enough as it is.
I’m not sure yet about this inbox integration, but maybe I’m just being a grumpy ol’ man now.
We already have social media stream in our inbox with notifications of who’s following you, what birthdays are coming up and who tagged a photo of you. The reality is everyone’s heart rate increases a little when they see a new message appear. As much as we want to call it clutter, we are stimulated by the idea that someone is talking or thinking about us.
Integrating social media into Google still isn’t going to keep users there rather than Facebook or Twitter. But, if Google wants to make up by their Wave flop, then this might actually work.
I’m not sure which level of Dante’s hell Loren is describing above with alerts coming from inboxes, social media tweats, birthday alerts, photos aka “clutter” and everything else pushing and shoving for attention in my inbox, but it must be pretty close to the center.
Does anyone else see the fundamental problem here? The more our inboxes (our lives) are crowded and overflowing, the less time we have to pay attention to the important messages. Take this example: Let’s say you have 200 messages in your inbox to sort through on Tuesday morning after a 3-day holiday, and 2 of them are important ones from your client/boss/colleague. You are more likely to miss those 2 if your inbox is making decisions for you about what is worthy of an alert under TODAY’s time management criteria (getting caught up after 3-day weekend).
I think we are burying each other in communications and deluding ourselves into thinking we are “connecting” and making “friends”. Give me a break!
Thanks for your post. When you say ‘don’t use a person’s name in the subject line’, would you be able to help me understand a little more about this, please? I’ve always found that using the person’s name is very very powerful. Thanks, in advance.
Loren,
For point number one on how you can rise to the challenge of inboxes that have gone social, you suggest working “harder to get your sending email address added to recipients’ contact lists or address books… because Buzz automatically follows anyone on the user’s contact list.”
It is my understanding that Google Buzz only follows those on a user’s contact list that have Gmail addresses. Is this incorrect?
Thanks for your post,
Elaine
If you want a central hub for personal messaging and who’s doing what on Facebook/Twitter/Email etc., a la a “dashboard” approach, it’s here and one I’m testing is called NetVibes. That “central hub” approach is coming, I believe, as our attention becomes more valuable currency and we only have so much of it to spend.
I agree, I’d rather keep my email inbox “pure”-ly email. If triage and finding the “important messages” are a challenge for people, maybe we need to better use the tools already there to facilitate that. I’m pretty devoted to Outlook as an email/calendaring/contacts management tool and of course in Outlook it’s easy to re-sort a crowded in-box to pick a message out by a single sender, subject or time; so those “important messages from the boss” don’t get buried. The shortcomings most of us have is how we process our email – we’re still stuck in a 1990′s mindset of last-in, first-out I’m guessing.
I can’t imagine having to check email in a Web-based interface (like Gmail) without the buffering of an interface like Outlook or NetVibes providing expanded functionality. I don’t want to be held hostage to my eyeballs being glued to any one company’s environment or interface (Twitter, Google, Facebook) – I want my own interface that I control. Isn’t that really the emerging issue?
Bill – Not sure if you were thinking I’m lobbying for this one-size-fits-all inbox…I’m merely pointing out what I see as inevitable…with Google’s Buzz (whatever its fate), being the latest sign of what’s coming.
That said, I also don’t think having a separate tool for every form of digital communication (email, blog/RSS reader, Tweets, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) is the right answer either. Having a single communications client actually sounds pretty good – but to your point the filtering technologies and interfaces need to make it easy to find the most important messages buried among the masses.
Loren